It is interesting what people choose to remember. A recent film celebrates Bert Trautmann, a member of the Hitler Youth who later became a goalkeeping legend in England. Trautmann apparently regretted his former antisemitism and did wonders for Anglo-German relations. How touching. I wonder how many people throughout Europe know the names of the Jewish international footballers who were gassed, worked to death, beaten to a pulp or shot into pits by the regime Trautmann fought for.

Poland’s first goal in international football came in Sweden in May 1922. It was the centre-half Józef Klotz who made history, converting a penalty. Whenever you see Robert Lewandowski score for Poland, remember he is the latest link in a chain that started with Klotz, star of Jewish clubs Jutrzenka Krakow and Maccabi Warsaw, and murdered in Warsaw in 1941.

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Also in the team that day was Leon Sperling, a left-winger who mesmerised defenders with his dribbling skills, earning 16 caps for Poland. Having coached in Lvov, he was allegedly shot dead by a German soldier in the city’s ghetto.

Two Zygmunts who played up front for Poland were among the three million Jews from that country to be obliterated. Zygmunt Krumholz was Jutrzenka’s all-time top scorer before the club was shut down by the Nazis. The details of his murder are unknown.

Zygmunt Steuermann played for Hasmonea Lvov, one of many clubs throughout the region with Zionistfoundations. He scored a hat-trick on his debut for the national team against Turkey in Lvov in 1926, the same place where he disappeared 15 years later, buried and forgotten among the ashes and bones of European Jewry.

Hungary contributed more Jewish players and coaches than any other country, a reality reflected in the number of Hungarian Jewish internationals murdered in the Holocaust. Let us not forget either that Hungary, together with Austria and Italy, were the leading forces in continental football before the second world war.

There were two greats among the murdered players. Árpád Weisz won six caps as a left-winger before embarking on a stellar coaching career. In 1930, at the age of 34, he led Internazionale to the Italian championship, and then won two more at Bologna. In October 1942, his wife and two children were gassed on their arrival at Auschwitz–Birkenau. Weisz worked there as a slave labourer for a further 16 months before being murdered.

József Braun was one of the greatest players ever to represent Hungary. A right-sided player with pinpoint crossing ability, he won the Hungarian league nine times in succession with MTK Budapest, a club relying heavily on Jewish footballing talent. Making his international debut at 17, Braun played 28 times for Hungary, scoring 11 goals. The David Beckham of his era was later sent as a slave labourer to support that country’s army in Ukraine, and murdered in 1943.

Three more MTK stars to represent Hungary were murdered. Antal Vágó patrolled MTK’s midfield for twelve seasons, winning the league nine times and appearing 17 times for Hungary. Some claim that he was shot into the river Danube in late 1944 along with thousands of other Budapest Jews. Henrik Nádler, a left-sided midfielder, won the league a mere seven times for MTK. A slender and creative player, he won seven caps for Hungary in the mid-1920s. He was murdered in 1944, probably as a slave labourer in Austria.

The last of our MTK stars was Imre Taussig, winning three titles as a right-winger, and playing five times for Hungary. Taussig, then 50, was murdered in March 1945 at the Bruck an der Leitha camp in Austria, while working as a slave labourer. Perhaps he lies among the 155 Hungarian Jews buried in a mass grave at that camp, marked by a stone emblazoned with the Star of David.

Just like Braun and Vágó, Ferenc Weisz won the Hungarian league nine times, but with MTK’s rivals, Ferencváros. A highly versatile player with a fierce shot, he appeared 17 times for the national team. In 1944, Weisz was deported with his wife from the outskirts of Budapest to Auschwitz-Birkenau, two statistics among the 437,402 Jews sent there from Hungary in 54 days.

Julius Hirsch won domestic German titles with Karlsruhe and SpVgg Fürth. A dynamic left-sided player, he scored four goals for Germany against the Netherlands in 1912. He was awarded the Iron Cross for his courage fighting for his country in the first world war. That same country’s government deported Hirsch to Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1943.

Max Scheuer was a stalwart of Hakoah Vienna, the most famous of the all-Jewish, Zionist football clubs. Playing as a full-back, Scheuer captained the team during their glory years in the 1920s, when they won the Austrian league and basked in the adoration of their passionate fans throughout the Jewish world.

In 1923, Scheuer made his one appearance for Austria. Less than two decades later, he was captured in Vichy France while trying to flee to neutral Switzerland, and sent on his final journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Our final murdered international is another Hakoah player, the left-winger Otto Fischer. A native of Vienna like Scheuer, he represented Austria seven times between 1923-1928, before becoming a coach. He started at Napoli, ending up at Olimpia Liepāja in Latvia, where he won the domestic league three times.

The name of Otto Fischer, a 40-year-old “football coach and locksmith”, appears on a list of around 7,000 murdered Jews from Liepāja. Some video footage exists of Jews being massacred in the town. Perhaps this particular international footballer is one of those men you can see on YouTube being shot into a ditch.

There are 13 players in our squad of international Holocaust martyrs – perhaps even more if anyone would like to alert me to their story. There is no goalkeeper though. Sadly, Bert Trautmann cannot step in. He does not qualify for several reasons, not least because he died peacefully in his home on the Spanish coast, aged 89.